More Than Words: Lennon Makes Much Ado About Nothing

October 14, 12:58 PMSF Rock Music ExaminerSarah-Jayne Couhault

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I Am The Walrus - The Magical Mystery Tour 1967

Have you ever loved a song to the point of ridiculousness but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t understand the lyrics? What was the artist thinking when writing your favorite tune? Let’s delve a little deeper…

 I am The Walrus - The Beatles

The Magical Mystery Tour – (Parlophone - 1967)

 “Walrus' is just saying a dream - the words don't mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions and it's ridiculous... What does it really mean, 'I am the eggman'? It could have been the pudding basin for all I care. It's not that serious.” John Lennon, Anthology.

 Perhaps one of the more difficult Beatles songs to decipher, “I am the Walrus” has been subject to many different interpretations since it was released as part of The Magical Mystery Tour in 1967.

 John Lennon reportedly admitted to writing parts of three songs whilst on acid, but unable to finish any of them, he combined three into one.

 Whilst the true inspiration for the song came from Lewis Caroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from the book, “Through the Looking Glass”, the lyric “mis-ter cit-y police-man” was written to the rhythm of a police siren going past Lennon’s house in Weybridge, whilst nonsensical lyrics about cornflakes and English garden’s came from somewhere completely different.

 Lennon told Hunter Davies, who was researching the Beatles for their official biography at the time, "I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll (the three songs) turn out to be different parts of the same song."

 According to Davies, the catalyst for creating unusual lyrics came from a letter Lennon received from a student at Quarry bank School, where Lennon himself attended. The student’s English teacher gave his class the task of determining Beatles lyrics. This amused Lennon who then asked friend, Pete Shotton, to remind him of a childhood rhyme:

 'Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,

All mixed together with a dead dog's eye,

Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,

Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick'.

 Taking a few words from the poem, Lennon added them to “I am The Walrus”. Davies then recalls Lennon turning to Shotton and saying “Let the fuckers work that one out”.

 It has been said that the ‘Eggmen’ were written into the song as reference to Caroll’s Humpty Dumpty character, however parallels have also been drawn to lead singer of The Animals, Eric Burdon. Burdon, a close friend of Lennon’s, was nicknamed ‘Eggs’ because of his fetish for cracking raw eggs onto naked girls during sex.

 The lyric ‘Semolina Pilchard’ according to some (including Marianne Faithful), was written in reference to Sergeant Norman Pilcher who made it his priority to bust music celebrities on drugs charges, whilst the ‘Elementary Penguin’, according to Lennon during a Playboy interview in 1980, “was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to 'Elementary Penguin' is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, 'Hare Krishna', or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days.”